I consider myself very lucky to have an ample supply of locally grown English Walnuts this winter! Early in the fall I had been looking for local sources of nuts to harvest on Craigslist... and then I found out that a friend had two walnut trees that were loaded with more than she could use.
She remembered I was looking for walnuts and invited me back when they were ripe. She is very sweet that way and quite a generous woman. As a thank you I left half the walnuts I harvested for her, to save her the trouble.
Harvesting the Walnuts
Most of the walnuts had fallen to the ground and many of them were covered with leaves. Climbing up the tree to extend my reach, I used a long pole with a hook on the end and shoot the giant branches to knock down as many more walnuts as I could. I just picked them off the ground into boxes, raking the leaves as I went to discover hidden walnuts.
I almost forgot to mention that as I was harvesting for several hours I kept cracking and eating fresh walnuts and boy were they good! It was interesting that the fresh walnuts are somewhat flexible and a little bit "spongy". Checking on the walnuts for sponginess vs dry snapping helped me determine when they were dry.
Drying the Walnuts
My friend has built several stacking 4x8 screens made of hardware cloth with wooden frames to spread the walnuts out in the barn and let them dry. She doesn't even hull them before drying so I figured I'd try the same (minus the screens). Whatever method you use, just make sure rodents cant get to them!
I just brought those walnuts home and spread them out hull and all on some paper on the ground to dry. Easy!
I pretty much spread them out on the floor wherever there was space! Here I am taking up a whole corner and a dresser with walnuts and Hawthorn berries. I sure am lucky @idyllwild put up with my redecorating :P
Dehulling Walnuts
Well I have read different ways of dehulling walnuts by pulling them out by hand or using a drill with a paint stirrer attachment in a 5 gallon bucket. I can definitely appreciate the lazy approach to drying the walnuts with hulls on.. after all I am not selling them.
In the case you do dehull them, a good way to cure and store the dehulled walnuts is in a mesh or breathable bag hanging somewhere dry where rodents cant get to them. If you are going to store them longer than the winter you'll want them in a cool dry place.
Storing Walnuts
This sack of walnuts was part of a work trade for helping a local farm plant out their garlic cash crop for next year. Interestingly they said that they don't have to do anything special to dehull their walnuts. The hulls split and they come out clean by themselves or by hand. Maybe they have good trees ;)
They use a Nut Wizard or similar tool to easily pick walnuts off the ground. The trick is staying on it every day during the season to keep it easy on yourself. Mow the grass or clear the ground before they drop. Harvest with nut wizard or similar daily and keep the leaves raked daily once the leaves start raking. It's a little extra diligence but keeps things cleaner and more organized.
Shelling Walnuts
Once dried we got to cracking! It's a good indoor winter activity. The above photo was our setup.
Grab the nuts out of a box. Crack them. Hand to friend to seperate nuts from shells. Shells made good fuel for the fire.
My friend suggested using a low sided box on the counter with a wooden block in the middle. Put a walnut on the block, hold it and tap it with a hammer. I liked that idea but tried it with my big mortar/pestle that I was already using to crack walnuts and it worked so well that I didn't even bother trying the hammer!
@idyllwild also wanted to separate some hulls from shells for a future natural dye project. We could have stored it with the shells but since we had so much it made sense to separate them out to save space.
The dried and shelled walnuts were put into airtight containers to store for the year. One large box of unhulled walnuts yielded roughly a gallon of shelled walnuts.
It was definitely a lot of time invested in these walnuts and it would have been way easier to "shell" out some money for walnuts at the store but I had a lot of fun harvesting and processing these walnuts and I know they were grown locally, organically and with love. I enjoy having that connection with my food and it gives me way more appreciation for the valuable protein I am consuming :)
By the way, check out this post by @schoonercreek on soaking nuts for optimal nutrition and digestion!